Everyone who goes to Krakow goes to Auschwitz. I am certainly no exception.I took the public transportation there (~2hr bus ride) to save on costs, but forked over 34PLN to join the on-site guided tour. It takes you through the two concentration camps (Auschwitz and nearby Birkenau) in about 3 hours. I thought it would be far more interesting and less boring than having to read all the small print displays, like I've been doing at the many museums over the past few days!
When I think about Auschwitz, gory images only come to mind. Fine, they can't keep a memorial site gory, but come on....this place was waaaaaay too NICE! Green grass growing everywhere. Spotless buildings – some used as special exhibition museums, and others as office space. Only a small section that displayed the victims' belongings and photos provided any indication of the horrific events that took place. These belongings included their suitcases, clothes, brushes, and shoes. By far, the most disturbing was the mounds of hair that were used in mattresses and some textile/clothing back then. Gross.
Birkenau was a bit better, in that you can get a sense of the vastness and the bareness of the concentration camps. Rows and rows of wooden barracks stuffed with these wooden bunks:
Can you imagine staying in one of these for months? Especially during the cold winter? And you don't even get the whole bunk to yourself (as I do in my hostels), but have to share it with 3-4 other people.
At Birkenau, you also get to walk along the train tracks through which the prisoners were brought in from all over eastern Europe, and then separated into "imprisonment" and "immediate death" groups. It was a long walk to those gas chambers...BTW, all of the gas chambers in Birkenau have been destroyed but there was a small one left in Auschwitz.
Anyways, Auschwitz wasn't exactly what I expected it to be, but the trip was nonetheless worthwhile. Depressing too. It's shocking, what the prisoners had to go through. More than that, though, I can't believe the Nazis were able to treat their fellow human beings in such an atrocious manner!
People suck.
3 comments:
did the guide tell u that one of the dudes who survived went back to auschwitz and realized his suitcase among the pile?
but the whole thing is just scary...how could someone even come up with this?
No! I didn't hear about that one. My guide was telling us a lot about all the awful experiments they conducted on women and twins. Very sad.
That is someplace I would like to go although my husband is reluctant to take me as he fears (and rightly so) that I would just spend the whole time in tears. I worked with a girl who's great-grandmother was in Auschwitz and died, however her daughter (my friend's grandmother) survived only to go to the holocaust museum and recognize her mother's arm tatoo on a lamp shade! Talk about heinous.
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